2/4/24 Jeremiah 1:4-10 “The Perfect Game Plan”

01 Feb 2/4/24 Jeremiah 1:4-10 “The Perfect Game Plan”

2/4/24    Jeremiah 1:4-10             “The Perfect Game Plan”

Have you ever been in a situation where you are just plain stuck and you don’t know how to get out or how to do something?  I have told you how the very first time I gave a sermon I was so nervous that I just shook.  Then I prayed and I have been talking ever since.  I suppose that if I ever get it right, God will let me quit talking.  The point is that this type of thing happens to all of us.  How nervous do we get before we begin a new job?  I remember how nervous I was when I first became a parent.  I didn’t know what to do.  I found out that babies didn’t come with an instruction manual.  Fortunately for most things, we have the Bible to help us.  I’m sure you can tell me of many other instances where this happens.  We all get apprehensive about trying something new.  We find this in the Bible also.  Moses definitely didn’t want to go back to Egypt because he felt he couldn’t talk.  Plus, he would have been sure that he was a wanted man in Egypt.  But God fixed that for him.  Last week we talked about the calling of Isaiah.  He also did not want to be a prophet because of his unclean lips.  We also learned that we all have unclean lips.  But God took his sin away and he became a great prophet.  Today, we are going to look at another great prophet, Jeremiah.  He too was reluctant.  Let’s see if we can reinforce our belief that God will help us do His good works, no matter what we are called to do.

Pastor Ken Sauer tells the story of when he first went to college and he wasn’t yet a Christian.  He had to take a speech class, which was required at the time, and he was rather petrified.  I’m sure he felt the same way that I did when I had to take a speech class in college.   Anyway, he was supposed to compare and contrast two things.  Well, he loved music so he compared and contrasted so called good heavy metal music with not so good heavy metal music.  He even demonstrated with his boom box tape player.  For his second speech he was supposed to talk about a hero from the hero’s perspective.  So, he painted his face and dressed up like Gene Simmons of the rock group KISS.  He was obviously a music junky.  His classmates loved him.

Before his next speech, he met up with a Christian classmate.  Ken had been raised in a church so he knew all about church.  However, his gods were these people who played rock and roll music.  With the help of his friend and others, Ken surrendered and gave his life to Jesus.  Little did he know that he would become a pastor later in life. He did this right before his next speech.  His classmates were all ready for another rock and roll speech.  Instead, Ken gave the class his testimony on how he came to know Jesus Christ.  He tells that you wouldn’t believe the looks of disbelief in the eyes of his classmates.  This was a dramatic change.

As we begin today, I’m going to give you a little biography of Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was a bullfrog.  No, really he was the son of a priest and he wasn’t very old in our reading.  Jeremiah would be the prophet for the last 5 of the southern kings of Judah.  He would see the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel and a little later, the southern kingdom of Judah would fall.  Jeremiah was a little different than the rest of the prophets because he didn’t just serve as a prophet to the king but he took the message to the nation.  Some find that it is a little difficult to discern a personal message from Jeremiah because he talks mainly of the nation of Judah and not to individuals.  I was thinking as I was reading about this stuff, that maybe it is time that we start talking about our nation.  Every time we see sin, we should be telling everyone around that this is not acceptable.  And I realize that it all begins when we personally accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, but our nation is in trouble and no one is listening to the answer.

I would just like to start with an example as we read what God tells Jeremiah in verse 5, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”  In other words, before Jeremiah was even conceived, God knew him.  God knew Jeremiah when he was in the womb.  I would like you to think about this as we look at the abortion industry in this country.  I think that this reading gives us good solid Scriptural evidence that is against abortion.  But before we get to be too self-righteous, we also need to remember that we are all sinners.  Therefore, we are to love those who have had an abortion and not judge them, even if we are against the practice.  We are to love our neighbors regardless of anything they have done.  We don’t accept the sin but we do accept the sinner.  No matter what, we are to love the sinner because, once again, we are all sinners.

So no matter what your view is of abortion, it remains that God knows us before we were ever formed.  I think that this was probably great for Jeremiah to hear.  He was a young man.  Some of the experts think that he might have only been a teenager.  And just as a sidebar here, the term teenager wouldn’t come into existence for centuries.  Others say he was around 20 years old.  This would be a very young age for a person to be a prophet if we think about this in human terms.  We would think that a person would have to be a little older to have this type of wisdom.  In our world we equate the wisdom of a prophet with something that comes with age.  This is usually true in our world today.

But this is not necessarily true when it comes to God.  God will use anyone that He chooses.  He will give old age wisdom to the young if that is His desire.  That is what He did for Jeremiah.  As a matter of fact, most of the prophets of the Old Testament were not the kind of people you would first consider to be qualified for the job.  But if God has decided that you are going to be a prophet, it is almost impossible to turn down.   God wouldn’t take no for an answer from Moses, He would not take no for an answer from Isaiah, and some of the other prophets and He wasn’t about to take ‘no’ as an answer from Jeremiah either.

I would like to tell you why God doesn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer from Jeremiah, Moses or you.  The reading tells us that God knows us before we were even conceived.  He knows us while we are in the womb.  I want you to think about this for a moment.  He doesn’t know the drug or alcohol riddled you.  He doesn’t know the person who is always complaining and doing things even more wrong than what you are complaining about.  He doesn’t know you who have buried yourself in busyness so that you don’t have to face life.  He doesn’t know any of these people because of who God is.  We have a God who looks ahead and sees the you that goes out and helps the neighbors.  He sees the you that is raising the family according to His standards.  He sees the you that helps a man rebuild his life after fire or helps the woman build a house.  You see, God sees you as the future.  This future is richly blessed because you have been following Jesus.

Now I don’t mean that God doesn’t know or care about these other people who are doing the wrong things.  He cares and loves these people but these are not the people he sees before we are born or when we are in the womb.  If He knows ahead of time that you are not going to be a follower, then He doesn’t keep track of you as much.  It’s hard to explain and we really don’t have time today.  It is just another of the mysteries of God.  So, He sees us in the beginning as being the perfect beings that we were meant to be.  It is only through Satan that we get side tracked.  Satan is the cause of all these behaviors that God doesn’t want you to have.  This is why it is so important for our babies to be born.  They are perfect in the ways of God until they are born.  Then they are born into sin and that is another whole topic and yet another sermon series.

So God knows all this stuff about us before we are born.  It is also important that you know who you are in the eyes of God.  You are special.  You are prized by God.  However, Jeremiah is suffering from a disease as we begin this reading.  It is the disease of thinking he can’t do something just because he is too young.  For some of us, including me, it is a little too late to use that excuse.  It is the disease of thinking you are ill equipped to do a project.  One author said that Jeremiah was suffering from spiritual near sightedness.  This means that Jeremiah could only see things about God that are right now, in Jeremiah’s little world.  He didn’t understand that he wasn’t the only person God was taking care of at that particular moment.  Basically, he was whining that he was too young and couldn’t be a prophet for God.  And no one would listen to someone so young.

This might be true in some cases, maybe even most cases.  There was a young pastor in the area awhile back that was in his twenties or early thirties and the people of his congregation are suffering from this disease.  They felt that he was too young to be able to take care of their needs.  He was too young to know the deep feelings that are a part of life.  He even questioned his own effectiveness because he was too young.  I was befriending this pastor because I think that he was genuinely from God and he preached the message of salvation from the Bible.  He has had some struggles but he now knows that he is sent from God with a purpose.  He is beginning to know who he is in the sight of God.

This is where we have to be also.  You need to know that you are good in the sight of God.  You can do whatever He wants you to do because He will empower you to get it done, from standing up here preaching to making food for pot luck or preparing meals for shut ins to helping your neighbor who does not drive.  Don’t focus or concentrate on what you can’t do.  Focus on what you can do and then go out and do it.  Each of you was made to do good things.  Concentrate on the good and get going.  You are a prized possession of the very God who has made everything around us, everything in the world.  You are that special.

Something happens to some people as they begin to realize that they are that special.  Sometimes pride grabs them and then they are useless to God.  Jeremiah was not a proud man.  He took the message that God gave him and he told it to all people around him.  The message was not popular and Jeremiah suffered greatly from the people who rejected the message.  But he persevered.  He not only persevered but he was humble as he carried the word of God.  That was his focus.

I think we all lose our focus once in a while.  We are broken people living in a broken world.  We have all seen those who refuse to humble themselves before the Lord.  This is might be because they don’t really know the Lord.  I have seen it happen in the ministry, in our schools, and in our athletics.  It happens everywhere.   It even happens to me.  Then I have to kick myself a little as I realize how small I am in this magnificent, glorious world that God made.  Then I feel really insignificant.  But I’m not insignificant in God’s eyes.  I feel humble that He would call me to serve you folks.  I feel very humble as I come to the pulpit every Sunday.  Just think about it.  God knew me 1000 years ago.  He knew I would be here this morning.  He knew me 73+ years ago before I was even born. He had a plan for me and He has a great plan for you.  Read His word, pray and then obey Him in all you do.

President Reagan once said, “I was raised to believe that God had a plan for everyone and that seemingly random twists of fate are all a part of His plan. My mother – a small woman with auburn hair and a sense of optimism that ran as deep as the cosmos – told me that everything in life happened for a purpose. She said all things were part of God’s plan, even the most disheartening setbacks, and in the end, everything worked out for the best. If something went wrong, she said, you didn’t let it get you down: You stepped away from it, stepped over it, and moved on. Later on, she added, something good will happen and you’ll find yourself thinking — ’If I hadn’t had that problem back then, then this better thing that did happen wouldn’t have happened to me.’ After I lost the job at Montgomery Ward, I left home again in search of work. Although I didn’t know it then, I was beginning a journey that would take me a long way from Dixon and fulfill all my dreams and then some. My mother, as usual, was right.”

The bottom line of all this is that not only is your mother usually right but also that God loves you always.  He loves you more than you can even imagine; before you were born, He loved you.  He has a game plan for each one of you and it is a grand game plan.  It is the greatest game plan that has ever been devised.  And it is your plan and your plan only.  You were not meant to sit on your faith.  I challenge you to go out and meet someone new this month.  Let’s see if you can meet at least one new person this month of February.  And when you meet this person, let the love of Jesus flow out of you.  Let this person see and feel the love that Jesus has for everyone. This is how you live in love.  Jeremiah was commanded to spread the message and so are you.  Go and remember that Jesus is with you every step of the way.  He loves you and will never leave you.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.